Latest Arthur C. Clarke Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I don't think there is such a thing as as a real prophet. You can never predict the future. We know why now, of course; chaos theory, which I got very interested in, shows you can never predict the future.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Real, Thinking, Chaos

  Source: www.salon.com

• A precondition for being a science fiction writer other than an interest in the future is that, an interest - at least an understanding of science, not necessarily a science degree but you must have a feeling for the science and its possibilities and its impossibilities, otherwise you're writing fantasy. Now, fantasy is also fine, but there is a distinction, although no one's ever been able to say just where the dividing lines come.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Understanding, Feelings

  Source: www.salon.com

• The success of a science fiction writer is if he can write a good read.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Science Fiction

  Source: www.salon.com

• In fact, one of the arguments for searching for intelligent life in space, elsewhere, is that we have no evidence that intelligence has any survival value. The most successful creatures on this planet are the cockroaches. They've been around, what is it, 100 million years or so and I suspect they'll still be there 100 million years in the future. Maybe intelligence is an evolutionary aberration which dooms its possessors in the way armor may have doomed some of the dinosaurs.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Successful, Intelligent, Survival

  Source: www.salon.com

• I don't think there are any secrets to writing in the - everybody has their own techniques. You must be widely read, that's one thing, because you have to resolve a tremendous amount of background information. Also, you should know what the competition is writing, just so you're not wasting your time doing the same thing. Unless you do it better, of course.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Thinking, Competition

  Source: www.salon.com

• Finding intelligent life would encourage people and also of course the opportunity of learning a tremendous amount, but this is a danger. We might be so overwhelmed with knowledge and information, that we might be depressed or even become suicidal - because what's the point if they're thousands of years ahead of us? Why should we bother? - or become the ultimate couch potatoes.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Suicidal, Intelligent, Opportunity

  Source: www.salon.com

• To be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. Although I know that most - that many science fiction writings have been anti-utopias. And the reason for that is that it's much easier and more exciting to write about a really nasty future than a - placid, peaceful one.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Peaceful, Different

  Source: www.salon.com

• Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, "What if?" not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere - flying, space travel, but even there we missed badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we'd have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  House, Flying, What If

  Source: www.salon.com

• I'm surprised at some technological development, and the realization that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I think the CD-ROM is the best example of that. The idea of having a whole symphony, or opera, or novel in a little piece of plastic is pretty amazing.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Technology, Thinking, Magic

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. Compassion for humans as well as animals.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Animal, Compassion, Values

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, "If you've got a message, use Western Union."

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Western

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The best proof that there's intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't come here.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Intelligent, Intelligent Life, Universe

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Don't mess up the environment until you're quite sure what you're doing.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Environment, Mess

  Source: www.avclub.com